Just a quick post to note a recent blog post by Chuck Hollis (@chuckhollis) that discusses some of the issues related to using EMC for commodity clouds.  The posting hubs around a conversation I have been having with Chuck trying to understand the EMC product line better and seeing if there is a fit for businesses building cost-effective clouds.

Chuck’s blog posting covers the discussion fairly well and he was very helpful.  My final takeaway is that I think there can be a place for EMC, traditionally a ‘premium’ vendor, in even low cost commodity clouds.  The challenge however, as he rightfully identifies is that EMC, the business, has a hard time understanding these requirements.  The local EMC sales team I’ve been dealing with doesn’t really understand the inherent assumptions I’m making.  There is a lot of push to simply purchase the ‘bigger box’.

A strongly recommended read for folks trying to understand both EMC’s potential value proposition in the cloud and how to build ‘scale out’ commodity clouds.